XVI
THE rain held off, and an hour later, when she started, wild gleams ofsunlight were blowing across the fields.
After Harney's departure she had returned her bicycle to its owner atCreston, and she was not sure of being able to walk all the way to theMountain. The deserted house was on the road; but the idea of spendingthe night there was unendurable, and she meant to try to push on toHamblin, where she could sleep under a wood-shed if her strength shouldfail her. Her preparations had been made with quiet forethought. Beforestarting she had forced herself to swallow a glass of milk and eat apiece of bread; and she had put in her canvas satchel a little packet ofthe chocolate that Harney always carried in his bicycle bag. She wantedabove all to keep up her strength, and reach her destination withoutattracting notice....
Mile by mile she retraced the road over which she had so often flown toher lover. When she reached the turn where the wood-road branched offfrom the Creston highway she remembered the Gospel tent--long sincefolded up and transplanted--and her start of involuntary terror whenthe fat evangelist had said: "Your Saviour knows everything. Come andconfess your guilt." There was no sense of guilt in her now, but onlya desperate desire to defend her secret from irreverent eyes, andbegin life again among people to whom the harsh code of the village wasunknown. The impulse did not shape itself in thought: she only knewshe must save her baby, and hide herself with it somewhere where no onewould ever come to trouble them.
She walked on and on, growing more heavy-footed as the day advanced. Itseemed a cruel chance that compelled her to retrace every step of theway to the deserted house; and when she came in sight of the orchard,and the silver-gray roof slanting crookedly through the laden branches,her strength failed her and she sat down by the road-side. She sat therea long time, trying to gather the courage to start again, and walk pastthe broken gate and the untrimmed rose-bushes strung with scarlet hips.A few drops of rain were falling, and she thought of the warm eveningswhen she and Harney had sat embraced in the shadowy room, and the noiseof summer showers on the roof had rustled through their kisses. Atlength she understood that if she stayed any longer the rain mightcompel her to take shelter in the house overnight, and she got up andwalked on, averting her eyes as she came abreast of the white gate andthe tangled garden.
The hours wore on, and she walked more and more slowly, pausing now andthen to rest, and to eat a little bread and an apple picked up from theroadside. Her body seemed to grow heavier with every yard of the way,and she wondered how she would be able to carry her child later, ifalready he laid such a burden on her.... A fresh wind had sprung up,scattering the rain and blowing down keenly from the mountain. Presentlythe clouds lowered again, and a few white darts struck her in the face:it was the first snow falling over Hamblin. The roofs of the lonelyvillage were only half a mile ahead, and she was resolved to push beyondit, and try to reach the Mountain that night. She had no clear plan ofaction, except that, once in the settlement, she meant to look for LiffHyatt, and get him to take her to her mother. She herself had beenborn as her own baby was going to be born; and whatever her mother'ssubsequent life had been, she could hardly help remembering the past,and receiving a daughter who was facing the trouble she had known.
Suddenly the deadly faintness came over her once more and she sat downon the bank and leaned her head against a tree-trunk. The long road andthe cloudy landscape vanished from her eyes, and for a time she seemedto be circling about in some terrible wheeling darkness. Then that toofaded.
She opened her eyes, and saw a buggy drawn up beside her, and a manwho had jumped down from it and was gazing at her with a puzzled face.Slowly consciousness came back, and she saw that the man was Liff Hyatt.
She was dimly aware that he was asking her something, and she looked athim in silence, trying to find strength to speak. At length her voicestirred in her throat, and she said in a whisper: "I'm going up theMountain."
"Up the Mountain?" he repeated, drawing aside a little; and as hemoved she saw behind him, in the buggy, a heavily coated figure with afamiliar pink face and gold spectacles on the bridge of a Grecian nose.
"Charity! What on earth are you doing here?" Mr. Miles exclaimed,throwing the reins on the horse's back and scrambling down from thebuggy.
She lifted her heavy eyes to his. "I'm going to see my mother."
The two men glanced at each other, and for a moment neither of themspoke.
Then Mr. Miles said: "You look ill, my dear, and it's a long way. Do youthink it's wise?"
Charity stood up. "I've got to go to her."
A vague mirthless grin contracted Liff Hyatt's face, and Mr. Miles againspoke uncertainly. "You know, then--you'd been told?"
She stared at him. "I don't know what you mean. I want to go to her."
Mr. Miles was examining her thoughtfully. She fancied she saw a changein his expression, and the blood rushed to her forehead. "I just want togo to her," she repeated.
He laid his hand on her arm. "My child, your mother is dying. Liff Hyattcame down to fetch me.... Get in and come with us."
He helped her up to the seat at his side, Liff Hyatt clambered in atthe back, and they drove off toward Hamblin. At first Charity hadhardly grasped what Mr. Miles was saying; the physical relief of findingherself seated in the buggy, and securely on her road to the Mountain,effaced the impression of his words. But as her head cleared shebegan to understand. She knew the Mountain had but the most infrequentintercourse with the valleys; she had often enough heard it said that noone ever went up there except the minister, when someone was dying. Andnow it was her mother who was dying... and she would find herself asmuch alone on the Mountain as anywhere else in the world. The sense ofunescapable isolation was all she could feel for the moment; thenshe began to wonder at the strangeness of its being Mr. Miles who hadundertaken to perform this grim errand. He did not seem in the leastlike the kind of man who would care to go up the Mountain. But here hewas at her side, guiding the horse with a firm hand, and bending on herthe kindly gleam of his spectacles, as if there were nothing unusual intheir being together in such circumstances.
For a while she found it impossible to speak, and he seemed tounderstand this, and made no attempt to question her. But presently shefelt her tears rise and flow down over her drawn cheeks; and he musthave seen them too, for he laid his hand on hers, and said in a lowvoice: "Won't you tell me what is troubling you?"
She shook her head, and he did not insist: but after a while he said, inthe same low tone, so that they should not be overheard: "Charity, whatdo you know of your childhood, before you came down to North Dormer?"
She controlled herself, and answered: "Nothing only what I heard Mr.Royall say one day. He said he brought me down because my father went toprison."
"And you've never been up there since?"
"Never."
Mr. Miles was silent again, then he said: "I'm glad you're coming withme now. Perhaps we may find your mother alive, and she may know that youhave come."
They had reached Hamblin, where the snow-flurry had left white patchesin the rough grass on the roadside, and in the angles of the roofsfacing north. It was a poor bleak village under the granite flank of theMountain, and as soon as they left it they began to climb. The road wassteep and full of ruts, and the horse settled down to a walk while theymounted and mounted, the world dropping away below them in great mottledstretches of forest and field, and stormy dark blue distances.
Charity had often had visions of this ascent of the Mountain but shehad not known it would reveal so wide a country, and the sight ofthose strange lands reaching away on every side gave her a new sense ofHarney's remoteness. She knew he must be miles and miles beyond the lastrange of hills that seemed to be the outmost verge of things, and shewondered how she had ever dreamed of going to New York to find him....
As the road mounted the country grew bleaker, and they drove acrossfields of faded mountain grass bleached by long months beneath the snow.In the hollows a few white birches tr
embled, or a mountain ash lit itsscarlet clusters; but only a scant growth of pines darkened the graniteledges. The wind was blowing fiercely across the open slopes; the horsefaced it with bent head and straining flanks, and now and then the buggyswayed so that Charity had to clutch its side.
Mr. Miles had not spoken again; he seemed to understand that she wantedto be left alone. After a while the track they were following forked,and he pulled up the horse, as if uncertain of the way. Liff Hyattcraned his head around from the back, and shouted against the wind:"Left----" and they turned into a stunted pine-wood and began to drivedown the other side of the Mountain.
A mile or two farther on they came out on a clearing where two or threelow houses lay in stony fields, crouching among the rocks as if to bracethemselves against the wind. They were hardly more than sheds, built oflogs and rough boards, with tin stove-pipes sticking out of their roofs.The sun was setting, and dusk had already fallen on the lower world,but a yellow glare still lay on the lonely hillside and the crouchinghouses. The next moment it faded and left the landscape in dark autumntwilight.
"Over there," Liff called out, stretching his long arm over Mr. Miles'sshoulder. The clergyman turned to the left, across a bit of bare groundovergrown with docks and nettles, and stopped before the most ruinous ofthe sheds. A stove-pipe reached its crooked arm out of one window, andthe broken panes of the other were stuffed with rags and paper.
In contrast to such a dwelling the brown house in the swamp might havestood for the home of plenty.
As the buggy drew up two or three mongrel dogs jumped out of thetwilight with a great barking, and a young man slouched to the door andstood there staring. In the twilight Charity saw that his face had thesame sodden look as Bash Hyatt's, the day she had seen him sleepingby the stove. He made no effort to silence the dogs, but leaned in thedoor, as if roused from a drunken lethargy, while Mr. Miles got out ofthe buggy.
"Is it here?" the clergyman asked Liff in a low voice; and Liff nodded.
Mr. Miles turned to Charity. "Just hold the horse a minute, my dear:I'll go in first," he said, putting the reins in her hands. She tookthem passively, and sat staring straight ahead of her at the darkeningscene while Mr. Miles and Liff Hyatt went up to the house. They stooda few minutes talking with the man in the door, and then Mr. Miles cameback. As he came close, Charity saw that his smooth pink face wore afrightened solemn look.
"Your mother is dead, Charity; you'd better come with me," he said.
She got down and followed him while Liff led the horse away. Asshe approached the door she said to herself: "This is where I wasborn... this is where I belong...." She had said it to herself oftenenough as she looked across the sunlit valleys at the Mountain; but ithad meant nothing then, and now it had become a reality. Mr. Miles tookher gently by the arm, and they entered what appeared to be the onlyroom in the house. It was so dark that she could just discern a groupof a dozen people sitting or sprawling about a table made of boards laidacross two barrels. They looked up listlessly as Mr. Miles and Charitycame in, and a woman's thick voice said: "Here's the preacher." But noone moved.
Mr. Miles paused and looked about him; then he turned to the young manwho had met them at the door.
"Is the body here?" he asked.
The young man, instead of answering, turned his head toward the group."Where's the candle? I tole yer to bring a candle," he said with suddenharshness to a girl who was lolling against the table. She did notanswer, but another man got up and took from some corner a candle stuckinto a bottle.
"How'll I light it? The stove's out," the girl grumbled.
Mr. Miles fumbled under his heavy wrappings and drew out a match-box.He held a match to the candle, and in a moment or two a faint circle oflight fell on the pale aguish heads that started out of the shadow likethe heads of nocturnal animals.
"Mary's over there," someone said; and Mr. Miles, taking the bottle inhis hand, passed behind the table. Charity followed him, and they stoodbefore a mattress on the floor in a corner of the room. A woman lay onit, but she did not look like a dead woman; she seemed to have fallenacross her squalid bed in a drunken sleep, and to have been left lyingwhere she fell, in her ragged disordered clothes. One arm was flungabove her head, one leg drawn up under a torn skirt that left the otherbare to the knee: a swollen glistening leg with a ragged stocking rolleddown about the ankle. The woman lay on her back, her eyes staring upunblinkingly at the candle that trembled in Mr. Miles's hand.
"She jus' dropped off," a woman said, over the shoulder of the others;and the young man added: "I jus' come in and found her."
An elderly man with lank hair and a feeble grin pushed between them. "Itwas like this: I says to her on'y the night before: if you don't takeand quit, I says to her..."
Someone pulled him back and sent him reeling against a bench along thewall, where he dropped down muttering his unheeded narrative.
There was a silence; then the young woman who had been lolling againstthe table suddenly parted the group, and stood in front of Charity.She was healthier and robuster looking than the others, and herweather-beaten face had a certain sullen beauty.
"Who's the girl? Who brought her here?" she said, fixing her eyesmistrustfully on the young man who had rebuked her for not having acandle ready.
Mr. Miles spoke. "I brought her; she is Mary Hyatt's daughter."
"What? Her too?" the girl sneered; and the young man turned on her withan oath. "Shut your mouth, damn you, or get out of here," he said;then he relapsed into his former apathy, and dropped down on the bench,leaning his head against the wall.
Mr. Miles had set the candle on the floor and taken off his heavy coat.He turned to Charity. "Come and help me," he said.
He knelt down by the mattress, and pressed the lids over the deadwoman's eyes. Charity, trembling and sick, knelt beside him, and triedto compose her mother's body. She drew the stocking over the dreadfulglistening leg, and pulled the skirt down to the battered upturnedboots. As she did so, she looked at her mother's face, thin yet swollen,with lips parted in a frozen gasp above the broken teeth. There was nosign in it of anything human: she lay there like a dead dog in a ditch.Charity's hands grew cold as they touched her.
Mr. Miles drew the woman's arms across her breast and laid his coatover her. Then he covered her face with his handkerchief, and placed thebottle with the candle in it at her head. Having done this he stood up.
"Is there no coffin?" he asked, turning to the group behind him.
There was a moment of bewildered silence; then the fierce girl spoke up."You'd oughter brought it with you. Where'd we get one here, I'd liketer know?"
Mr. Miles, looking at the others, repeated: "Is it possible you have nocoffin ready?"
"That's what I say: them that has it sleeps better," an old womanmurmured. "But then she never had no bed...."
"And the stove warn't hers," said the lank-haired man, on the defensive.
Mr. Miles turned away from them and moved a few steps apart. He haddrawn a book from his pocket, and after a pause he opened it and beganto read, holding the book at arm's length and low down, so that thepages caught the feeble light. Charity had remained on her knees by themattress: now that her mother's face was covered it was easier to staynear her, and avoid the sight of the living faces which too horriblyshowed by what stages hers had lapsed into death.
"I am the Resurrection and the Life," Mr. Miles began; "he thatbelieveth in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live.... Though aftermy skin worms destroy my body, yet in my flesh shall I see God...."
IN MY FLESH SHALL I SEE GOD! Charity thought of the gaping mouth andstony eyes under the handkerchief, and of the glistening leg over whichshe had drawn the stocking....
"We brought nothing into this world and we shall take nothing out ofit----"
There was a sudden muttering and a scuffle at the back of the group. "Ibrought the stove," said the elderly man with lank hair, pushing hisway between the others. "I wen' down to Creston'n bought it... n' I
got aright to take it outer here... n' I'll lick any feller says I ain't...."
"Sit down, damn you!" shouted the tall youth who had been drowsing onthe bench against the wall.
"For man walketh in a vain shadow, and disquieteth himself in vain; heheapeth up riches and cannot tell who shall gather them...."
"Well, it ARE his," a woman in the background interjected in afrightened whine.
The tall youth staggered to his feet. "If you don't hold your mouthsI'll turn you all out o' here, the whole lot of you," he cried with manyoaths. "G'wan, minister... don't let 'em faze you...."
"Now is Christ risen from the dead and become the first-fruits of themthat slept.... Behold, I show you a mystery. We shall not all sleep, butwe shall all be changed, in a moment, in the twinkling of an eye, atthe last trump.... For this corruptible must put on incorruption and thismortal must put on immortality. So when this corruption shall have puton incorruption, and when this mortal shall have put on immortality,then shall be brought to pass the saying that is written, Death isswallowed up in Victory...."
One by one the mighty words fell on Charity's bowed head, soothingthe horror, subduing the tumult, mastering her as they mastered thedrink-dazed creatures at her back. Mr. Miles read to the last word, andthen closed the book.
"Is the grave ready?" he asked.
Liff Hyatt, who had come in while he was reading, nodded a "Yes," andpushed forward to the side of the mattress. The young man on the benchwho seemed to assert some sort of right of kinship with the dead woman,got to his feet again, and the proprietor of the stove joined him.Between them they raised up the mattress; but their movements wereunsteady, and the coat slipped to the floor, revealing the poor body inits helpless misery. Charity, picking up the coat, covered her motheronce more. Liff had brought a lantern, and the old woman who had alreadyspoken took it up, and opened the door to let the little processionpass out. The wind had dropped, and the night was very dark and bitterlycold. The old woman walked ahead, the lantern shaking in her hand andspreading out before her a pale patch of dead grass and coarse-leavedweeds enclosed in an immensity of blackness.
Mr. Miles took Charity by the arm, and side by side they walked behindthe mattress. At length the old woman with the lantern stopped, andCharity saw the light fall on the stooping shoulders of the bearers andon a ridge of upheaved earth over which they were bending. Mr. Milesreleased her arm and approached the hollow on the other side of theridge; and while the men stooped down, lowering the mattress into thegrave, he began to speak again.
"Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live and is fullof misery.... He cometh up and is cut down... he fleeth as it were ashadow.... Yet, O Lord God most holy, O Lord most mighty, O holy andmerciful Saviour, deliver us not into the bitter pains of eternaldeath...."
"Easy there... is she down?" piped the claimant to the stove; and theyoung man called over his shoulder: "Lift the light there, can't you?"
There was a pause, during which the light floated uncertainly over theopen grave. Someone bent over and pulled out Mr. Miles's coat----("No,no--leave the handkerchief," he interposed)--and then Liff Hyatt, comingforward with a spade, began to shovel in the earth.
"Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of His great mercy to takeunto Himself the soul of our dear sister here departed, we thereforecommit her body to the ground; earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust todust..." Liff's gaunt shoulders rose and bent in the lantern light as hedashed the clods of earth into the grave. "God--it's froze a'ready,"he muttered, spitting into his palm and passing his ragged shirt-sleeveacross his perspiring face.
"Through our Lord Jesus Christ, who shall change our vile body that itmay be like unto His glorious body, according to the mighty working,whereby He is able to subdue all things unto Himself..." The lastspadeful of earth fell on the vile body of Mary Hyatt, and Liff restedon his spade, his shoulder blades still heaving with the effort.
"Lord, have mercy upon us, Christ have mercy upon us, Lord have mercyupon us..."
Mr. Miles took the lantern from the old woman's hand and swept its lightacross the circle of bleared faces. "Now kneel down, all of you," hecommanded, in a voice of authority that Charity had never heard.She knelt down at the edge of the grave, and the others, stiffly andhesitatingly, got to their knees beside her. Mr. Miles knelt, too. "Andnow pray with me--you know this prayer," he said, and he began: "OurFather which art in Heaven..." One or two of the women falteringly tookthe words up, and when he ended, the lank-haired man flung himself onthe neck of the tall youth. "It was this way," he said. "I tole her thenight before, I says to her..." The reminiscence ended in a sob.
Mr. Miles had been getting into his coat again. He came up to Charity,who had remained passively kneeling by the rough mound of earth.
"My child, you must come. It's very late."
She lifted her eyes to his face: he seemed to speak out of anotherworld.
"I ain't coming: I'm going to stay here."
"Here? Where? What do you mean?"
"These are my folks. I'm going to stay with them."
Mr. Miles lowered his voice. "But it's not possible--you don't know whatyou are doing. You can't stay among these people: you must come withme."
She shook her head and rose from her knees. The group about the gravehad scattered in the darkness, but the old woman with the lantern stoodwaiting. Her mournful withered face was not unkind, and Charity went upto her.
"Have you got a place where I can lie down for the night?" she asked.Liff came up, leading the buggy out of the night. He looked from oneto the other with his feeble smile. "She's my mother. She'll take youhome," he said; and he added, raising his voice to speak to theold woman: "It's the girl from lawyer Royall's--Mary's girl... youremember...."
The woman nodded and raised her sad old eyes to Charity's. When Mr.Miles and Liff clambered into the buggy she went ahead with the lanternto show them the track they were to follow; then she turned back, and insilence she and Charity walked away together through the night.